News & Rankings

Raleigh lands on Forbes America's 20 Best Cities for Young Professionals in 2016 list

Raleigh has landed on Forbes America's 20 Best Cities for Young Professionals in 2016. Forbes notes that recent college graduates have an easier time finding jobs than in the midst of the Great Recession, but are still graduating with burdensome student loans meaning they need affordable and thriving cities to live in. To find out which cities offer the best overall prospects for college-educated workers with five years of experience or less, Forbes analyzed data on job growth, unemployment rates, pay and cost of living in America’s largest 100 metro areas.

According to Forbes, the cities that made the list generally fell into two categories. The first, job-heavy economic powerhouses where the pay is high and the cost of living is too and the second, the pay is still decent but, unlike the overpriced Bay Area, the cost of living is a relative bargain - Raleigh falls into this category.

The factors Forbes analyzed were:

Local unemployment rates

Job growth projections

Median salaries for college graduates with five years or less of work experience

Cost of Living

percentage of the local population aged 25 and older with a bachelor’s degrees or higher

Forbes noted that Raleigh landed at no. 3 due to “an abundance of local universities–the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina State University in Raleigh, and Duke in nearby Durham–which pump out a perpetually educated workforce (43% of the population 25 or older has a bachelor’s degree). And the metro’s proximity to the Research Triangle Park, where more than 170 companies (IBM, GlaxoSmithKlin, Credit Suisse) have outposts, makes it a major job center.”

Wake County Economic Development’s Executive Director, Adrienne Cole, was quoted in the story saying, “We have great universities here, and that’s fueling an energetic, innovative community and economy. You couple that with great restaurants, great nightlife, wonderful live music.” She also stated, “We’ve got great employment opportunities coupled with this incredible quality of life.”